“Culled from sessions at a variety of professional studios (The Unknown in Anacortes, Tiny Telephone in Oakland) as well as improvised recording spaces (the album was finished in the closet of an old pencil factory in Oakland.”
Named after one of the millions and millions short and strange videos you can find on YouTube—this one of a magician making a quarter disappear from a teenager’s hand—Disappearing Coin is a weird album. Genre-wise it’s mostly folk rock imbued with electronics and whimsical studio experiments, but what sets it apart is its nerdy, silly spirit: This is admittedly my first time listening to Stephen Steinbrink, but I will never forget the name because how many others could casually insert “mandelbrot set” into their lyrics? The entire album feels like drifting through a vintage animated cartoon, psychedelic, light, and dreamy. Its apotheosis? The instrumental, minute-long title track “Step’s Disappearing Coin,” a minimalist, Escheresque structure of piano keys elevating you to unknown heights.
